Inspecting the Troops and Romance

Three Way Etiquette

Title: Three Way Etiquette Prompt: Coming HomeRating: PG, I promise. :DSeries: This Thing That Happened This One TimeContent Summary/Notes/Warnings: Llewellyn and Wes have a Queen City lunch. (I was just craving chili when I wrote this.)

All stories in "This Thing That Happened This One Time" are posted as vignettes and are not in chronological order. One day there will be a list where they are linked in order, but today is not that day. :)

Although he was feeling a little bit wary as he stood in front of the building with the blue and yellow logo on the sign and the odd smell wafting towards him within, Wes Denver couldn’t help but smile at the utter look of joy that was radiating from his boyfriend’s face.

Lyn clapped his hands together in front of him and took a deep breath with his eyes closed.

“I haven’t been here in forever!” He said excitedly as he grabbed Wes’ hand and dragged him towards the entrance.

“Yummy!”

Wes laughed at him and followed him inside where they seated themselves in a quiet booth. Soon a waitress appeared and took their drink orders after depositing a small bowl of oyster crackers in front of each of them.

“What’s this?” Wes asked.

Lyn eyed him. “They’re crackers,” he said.

“Why...”

Lyn didn’t offer a verbal answer. Instead he plucked one of the crackers from the bowl and popped it into his mouth.

“These are the best oyster crackers,” he said after he’d eaten another handful. “It’s just not the same when mom sends me a care package.”

“You eat them plain?” Wes asked skeptically. “Weren’t you just telling me that carbs are the enemy the other week?”

Lyn made a dismissive gesture with a handful of crackers and shrugged.

“I get back here maybe twice a year, Wes,” he said. “I’m gonna fill myself up with all the carbs I darn well please.”

Wes smiled to himself as he turned his attention away from Lyn, who was flinging oysters up into the air and catching them in his mouth when they came back down. He regarded the menu with increasing fascination, and when he looked back up Lyn was staring at him with a grin on his face.

“What are you having?” Wes asked. “I mean...I don’t know what to order here. You’re the expert.”

“Well, you like cheese right?” He said.

Wes nodded.

“You like onions...do you like beans? Because I don’t like beans, so I’m not sure what that’s going to taste like.”

“I’ll just have what you’re having,” Wes said. Best not to complicate things, he thought.

Lyn nodded his approval and they both folded their menus. They could barely start a conversation before the waitress was back.

“Two three ways,” Lyn told her. He handed her their menus and she disappeared once again.

“I still can’t believe you call it that,” Wes said with a laugh.

Lyn laughed in return. “What else are we going to call it? This is the Naughty Nati, after all. Giant Jesus statues aside.”

Wes laughed at the thought of the huge statue they had passed on the trip down from the airport in Dayton that seemed to rise up out of a man-made lake signaling ‘touchdown’ to the commuters traveling up and down the I-75.

The waitress returned shortly with their lunch and cracker refills and Wes was suddenly thrown out of the conversation they were having about plans to visit the Contemporary Arts Center downtown by a steaming plate of spaghetti piled high with cheese and what he could only presume was the thing they called chili. He paused for a moment before picking up a fork and intrepidly making an attempt at figuring out how to get the layers into his mouth intact.

Lyn watched him with amusement as he tried to twirl the pasta around his fork spaghetti style.

“No, no,” he finally said and moved to sit beside his boyfriend. “You’re doing it all wrong!”

“C’mon,” Wes pouted at him. “I know how to eat food.”

“You just got to cut into it.” Lyn ignored his protest and demonstrated by cutting into his own meal with the side of his fork and holding it up for Wes to see.

“Like that!” He said. “That way you get the cheese and spaghetti and chili all in one bite. Savor it!”

Wes did as instructed. When he had finished with his first bite, he glanced over at Lyn with a skeptical expression on his face.

“Sooo, what do you think?” Lyn asked.

“I think this is really weird,” Wes replied. He frowned a little and took another bite.

“Not a bad weird,” he said. “But like a...’this is not chili’ weird.”

Lyn laughed and shrugged and took another bite of his own three way.

“You know, when I was a kid... I had no idea that spaghetti and chili didn’t always go together under any and all circumstances,” Lyn said.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Imagine my surprise when we went to visit my aunt out west and I got this bowl full of...I don’t know. It had beans in it. I was distressed. I demanded pasta and then tried to eat around the beans and the tomato chunks as best I could.”

“You are so weird,” Wes said. He was smiling though and reached out to pat Lyn fondly on the shoulder.

“Well,” Lyn replied. “That is what makes me so damn fantastic.”

“You are fantastic,” Wes said.

They ate in silence until Wes had to take pause to inform Lyn that the taste was growing on him. Lyn gave him an ‘I told you so’ in return and they finished the meal without another word.

“Do you ever miss it?” Wes said. He took a sip from his pop and glanced over at his boyfriend.

“Skyline?”

“Nah,” Wes replied. “The city. It’s home, right? Do you miss it?’

“Uh-uh,” Lyn said. He shook his head. “I don’t. A return visit is nice every once in a while, but I wouldn’t want to live here again.”